The primary goal of the Swedish national rehabilitation plan on pain is to reduce disability and facilitate return-to-work. However, there is a lack of treatment strategies that effectively target and affect return-to-work and reduce sickness absence, and that in addition are sufficiently easy and feasible to administer in primary care. A new activity and life-role targeting rehabilitation program (ALAR) has been developed to reduce psychosocial barriers to rehabilitation progress, promote re-integration into life-role activities and facilitate return-to-work. The program will be implemented and provided as one of the pain treatment modalities available through multi-professional teams in primary care in one Swedish county. This study aims to evaluate the effect of an activity and life-role targeting pain rehabilitation program on the outcome variables return-to-work and sickness absence.